Can Creative Genius Be Scientifically Studied? A Review of “Origins of Genius” by Dean Keith Simonton

It’s common to think of the genius of men like Shakespeare, Darwin, and Einstein as something impossible to understand or study, kind of like a miracle. But psychologists consider all facets of human behavior to be fair game for research, no matter how strange or unusual. The geniuses who wrote Hamlet, who painted the Sistine Chapel, and who discovered the theory of relativity are extreme examples of personality traits like creativity, intelligence, and literary/artistic/scientific ability that all people posses to some extent. Dean Keith Simonton is a psychologist who specializes in studying creativity and genius. In his book Origins of Genius: Darwinian Perspectives on Creativity, Simonton applies Darwin’s theory of evolution to the study of creative achievement.

Simonton begins by defining “genius”. A genius isn’t someone with a high IQ, although most people we consider geniuses were very intelligent. A genius is someone who accomplishes something that sets him apart from everyone else, i.e. someone who has achieved eminence. Beethoven is a musical genius because of his symphonies, piano concertos, and other works that continue to be performed almost two centuries after his death. If Beethoven hadn’t composed any music, he wouldn’t be considered a genius, no matter how much intelligence or ability he possessed. “The phrase unrecognized genius becomes an oxymoron” (p. 5).

A “creative genius” is someone who invents or discovers an original, adaptive idea or product. Originality is required because mere imitation isn’t creative. Adaptiveness is required because if the new mousetrap doesn’t work, it isn’t any better than what we have now. If the new theory doesn’t fit the facts, or has internal contradictions, it won’t help advance science. If no one wants to listen to the new symphony, then no matter how original it is, it won’t be considered a great musical composition.

Given these definitions, Simonton goes on to present the research, theories, and biographical information that have advanced our understanding of creative genius. He begins by examining the thought processes of geniuses. To understand how Darwinism can be applied to this thought process, Simonton mentions Donald Campbell’s theory. This theory states that creative thinking involves 3 conditions:

1. There exists some process that generates ideational variations, similar to genetic recombinations and mutations.
2. These variations are subjected to a selection mechanism, similar to natural selection, but more cognitive or cultural in nature.
3. There is some retention procedure that preserves and reproduces creative ideas, similar to genetic retention.

In simpler language, creative people come up with their ideas blindly (i.e. without knowing beforehand whether or not they will be successful or adaptive). They select the most promising ideas, and publish or otherwise share them with other people. The audience they share with further selects the creators’ ideas, rejecting some of them and accepting others. The ones that win out in the end, and become the acknowledged masterpieces, are a small fraction of the total number of ideas and products generated by the creators.

The more ideas, the greater chance that one or more of them will become a masterpiece. The most successful geniuses are also the most prolific. Shakespeare, Beethoven, Newton and others created (or discovered) many things that are now forgotten. The few things for which they are remembered are only a fraction of their total output.

How do creative people think? Like other people, they use imagery, intuition, and insight, along with analytical thinking. The main difference between creative and ordinary people is that creative people utilize remote association and divergent thinking. Remote association is making connections between separate ideas. A historical example of remote association is Einstein’s connecting relative space and time with the constancy of the speed of light. Before Einstein, scientists had considered these separate subjects.

Divergent thinking is the ability to come up with original ideas, solutions, and responses to questions. It is distinguished from convergent thinking, which is the coming up with the expected solution or response, e.g. the correct answer on a standardized test. Some fields require more divergent thinking than others. For example, artists, composers, and creative writers usually think more divergently than scientists.

Creative people also have different personalities than most other people. They have broad interests, they’re open to novel and ambiguous stimuli, they have trouble focusing on any one thing, they are flexible cognitively and behaviorally, they are more likely to be introverted, and are nonconformists. While not all creative geniuses fit this personality profile exactly, most exhibit at least some of these traits.

Creative people are also more likely to have psychiatric problems than the average person. There are many examples of depressed, bipolar, alcoholic, suicidal, and psychotic creative geniuses. Famous names with severe disorders include Vincent Van Gogh, Robert Schumann, Ernest Hemingway, Peter Tchaikovsky, and Charles Darwin. It’s important to understand, however, that most creative geniuses don’t exhibit high levels of psychopathology, or they would never have been able to create anything. Their symptoms tend to be midway between normal and abnormal.

Not surprisingly, geniuses usually grow up in enriched family environments. Their parents tend to have higher-than-average levels of formal education, with at least one parent working at an intellectual profession. Their parents value learning and supply their children with an ample supply of books, magazines, games. Visits to museums, exhibits, galleries, libraries and other places that stimulate intellectual development are common.

What’s unusual about geniuses’ childhood experiences is that they frequently face adversity. Geniuses often have physical or sensory disabilities, or chronic childhood illnesses. Sometimes their parents become bankrupt or impoverished. Many geniuses have experienced the death of one or both parents at an early age. These adverse experiences may set the young future genius on a developmental path different from most of his peers.

While geniuses are all highly intelligent, many of them lack advanced degrees or do poorly in school. Artistic creators generally have less schooling than scientific creators. Formal schooling suppresses creativity in favor of memorization and conformity. So it makes sense that many geniuses would dislike school. Since education and training is required for acquiring the necessary expertise in one’s profession, creators who drop out of school always are autodidacts. Many geniuses have one or more mentors who help compensate for the lack of formal education.

Like all complex human behaviors, creative achievement is a product of both nature and nurture. On the nurture side, as I mentioned above, creative people tend to grow up in enriched home environments, and also experience more traumatic childhood experiences than usual. But many people grow up in enriched environments and have adverse childhood experiences. Only a tiny fraction become geniuses. So there must be a unique genetic predisposition that interacts with these experiences to produce a genius. The technical term for this is “emergenesis”, or a combination of multiple genetic components, each of which must be inherited for the trait to appear. An emergenic trait is shared but identical twins, but doesn’t run in families. Evidence that creative genius is emergenic comes from family studies of geniuses. Many of the greatest geniuses in history, including Newton, Shakespeare, Beethoven, and Michelangelo, have no relatives of distinction.

Unlike intelligence, which is normally distributed in the population (i.e. having a bell-shaped curve), creative achievement is highly skewed. There are two mathematical laws describing this skewed distribution. The Price law states that if k represents the number of active creators in a field, then √k of these creators contribute about half of the products in the field. For example, assuming that there are 100 total architects, then 10 out of 100 architects are responsible for half of all building designs. The Lotka law states that the number of creators who contribute n products is inversely proportional to n squared. For example, the number of creators who contribute 10 products is c/100, where c is a constant. The number of creators who contribute 20 products (twice the number) is c/400, only 1/4 of who contribute 10 products. If you go up to 50 products (five times the original number), then the number is c/2500, or 1/25 of who contribute 10 products.

These laws hold whether one is considering all works created, or just works that have stood the test of time. For example, all of the works that make up the standard repertoire of classical music (i.e. works that are still performed today) were composed by about 250 composers. The square root of this number is about 16, which is the number of composers accounting for half of all the pieces performed today. Mozart alone composed 6.1% of the standard repertoire, which is slightly greater than the sum total of the bottom 150 composers!

The level of creative achievement varies across a creator’s career. At the beginning of his career, his output gradually increases. At some point he reaches a peak, after which his output declines. This trajectory is based on career age rather than chronological age. Late bloomers will have a later peak. Some disciplines, such as mathematics and poetry, have a much earlier peak than other disciplines, such as geology and philosophy.

One of the most interesting and difficult-to-explain aspects of creative genius is that achievement isn’t constant over place and time. Genius tends to cluster in some places at certain times. When these places experience a burst of creative achievement, they are said to have experienced a “golden age”. Eventually, and for reasons not fully understood, these golden ages decline to silver ages, and finally to dark ages. Examples of golden ages of achievement include Ancient Greece, the European Renaissance and Scientific Revolution, and similar (but less golden) ages in China, Japan, and other places.

It’s easy to understand how the presence of genius in one’s time can help spur additional genius. This can occur by means of immediate predecessors and contemporaries. “[T]he number of eminent creators in one generation is a positive function of the number in the preceding generation who are active in the same or affiliated domains” (p. 206). These eminent predecessors serve both as role models and mentors. Charles Darwin had Alexander Monro and Adam Sedgwick as his teachers, and was influenced by Hutton, Lamarck, Sprengel, Malthus, Lyell, and others. Beethoven studied under Haydn, and was influenced by Mozart.

Eminent scientists and artists are more likely to occur during eras in which they can form relationships with contemporaries in their fields. These contemporaries don’t have to be at the same level that the geniuses are. “No matter what the domain of achievement, genius of the highest quality tends to be contemporaneous with genius of a lesser rank, and even with the more obscure also-rans and nonentities” (p. 208). Geniuses need audiences, professional contacts, and social networks to help motivate them to create. The idea of the lone-wolf genius, like Howard Roark in the novel The Fountainhead, doesn’t correspond to historical fact. While there were likely potential geniuses during the European Dark Ages, the barren cultural milieu prevented them from achieving anything.

Geniuses tend to live during eras of high intellectual receptiveness, ethnic diversity, and political openness. Some level of basic political freedom and economic prosperity is required for creative flourishing. It must be noted, however, that most creative achievement occurred under regimes which by today’s standards would be considered autocratic and unfree. Remember that Socrates, who lived during the Athenian creative golden age, was executed for his beliefs. Galileo, who lived during the European scientific revolution, was persecuted by the Catholic Church.

The division of labor is an important sociological factor that contributed to the emergence of creative genius. If every person in a society is engaged in physical labor such as hunting, gathering, homemaking, or farming, no one will have any time to create. With increased population comes specialization and division of labor, including jobs for creative people such as painters, sculptors, architects, musicians, and engineers. The European scientific revolution gave birth to another profession that gave men opportunity for creative achievement. Population size is a necessary, but not sufficient factor for the emergence of creative genius, as there were many large societies (e.g. Europe during the dark ages) that had very little creative achievement, and smaller societies (e.g. classical Athens) that had a great deal of achievement.

Origins of Genius is strong in its understanding and analysis of individual genius. Simonton does an excellent job explaining creative thought processes, in presenting what personality characteristics distinguish geniuses from everyone else, in explaining how developmentally and genetically they are different, and in describing the mathematical laws that show the skewed output of creative achievement.

The book’s main weaknesses have to do with group phenomena, including clustering of genius, and gender differences in genius. While Simonton can explain why having creative achievers in one’s own and preceding generations can help spur geniuses to accomplishment, he can’t explain what starts and ends this process. Since genius occurs in golden ages that come and go, something must occur to start the process of creative achievement, and something must end it. Simonton has little to offer to explain this.

Another problem is that Simonton completely ignores the cultural and creative dark ages we are currently living in. As I explain in an earlier blog post, dullness has become triumphant in our times. In the arts, modernism has completely destroyed all the great European traditions, and we have a reign of mediocrity. This isn’t just my personal opinion. I can prove this by asking who are the great contemporary artists, writers, and composers. Various people will provide different responses, but none of the names mentioned will have the recognition that the great artists of the past have. As Simonton mentions in his book, an unrecognized genius is an oxymoron. A genius who is unrecognized in his own time will most likely remain unrecognized in future generations.

In the sciences, there is some low-level creative group achievement, but no individual geniuses on the level of Newton, Darwin, or Einstein. As proof, I’ll offer the same name recognition test that I did for artists. While every year a handful of scientists win Nobel Prizes, they are always people no one (outside their fields) has heard of. These people, while accomplished, are not geniuses.

One of the problems with both the arts and sciences is that both have become so highly professionalized and esoteric that people can gain distinction in a field, but be unknown outside the field. This is partly due to the disintegration and balkanization of our culture, which has various causes, including modernism (in the arts) and technology (e.g. the Internet). But it is partly due to declining accomplishment. If someone accomplished something at the level of Einstein, Michelangelo, or Beethoven, most educated people would have heard of him. This is as true today as it would have been true centuries ago.

One historical fact that Simonton tries unsuccessfully to explain on environmental grounds is the almost complete lack of female creative geniuses. “In Western civilization, for example, women make up only around 3% of the most illustrious figures of history. And many of these females [e.g. monarchs] entered the records in part by birthright or marriage. (p. 215)” Almost all geniuses in history have been male. Some fields, such as mathematics, physics, and music composition, are completely dominated by men. The one field where women have a minor presence is literature.

Simonton rejects biological explanations such as lower IQ, less variable IQ, and biologically-based personality differences. He provides more conventional environmental explanations such as child-rearing practices, the costs of marriage and family to female achievement, sex discrimination, and philosophical/cultural hostility to female employment and achievement. He claims that female achievement in literature is due solely to the fact that creative writing requires little start-up cost or overhead. But he ignores that publication (including book marketing) does require overhead. Many women had access to musical instruments in their home. Why didn’t they use these instruments to compose music, as men did? Why is the female lack of creative achievement universal across societies, including cultures that had little interaction with each other (e.g. Eastern and Western societies before the modern era). Why, in contemporary America and Europe, when all these environmental hindrances to female creative achievement have been removed, do we still see so little female achievement?

In conclusion, Origins of Genius is an excellent summary of scientific knowledge about creative genius at the beginning of the new millennium. It provides a wealth of detailed facts and analyses that illuminate our understanding of this strange and wondrous phenomenon. Its main weakness is a lack of understanding of what environmental factors bring about creative golden ages and dark ages. This weakness makes it unhelpful in trying to engender new works of genius, i.e. helping bring about a new golden age of creativity.

Are Scientists Objective and Rational? A Review of “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” by Thomas S. Kuhn

We think of science as a rational, empirical alternative to religion and spirituality. The scientific method is a common denominator for all the different fields in science. Science is the basis for technology, which has improved the standard of living for billions of people. In the developed world, we pride ourselves on public policy being guided by science rather than superstition or tradition.

While science is objective and rational, what about scientists? Are scientists a bunch of supermen not subject to desires, wishes, and prejudices that non-scientists experience? Or are they human beings, with the same frailties and failings that other humans have? Thomas S. Kuhn takes up this question in his almost 50-year-old classic book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The question is still relevant today, as science impacts the daily lives of more people in the world than it ever has before.

The question I ask in the title to this review can be rephrased as: Is scientific advancement always linear and progressing at a constant rate, or is it characterized by long fallow periods interrupted by occasional revolutions? The media and textbooks favor the former interpretation. Almost every day, the media reports on some new study or experiment that adds to our scientific knowledge. Science textbooks give students the sense that past historical controversies are irrelevant, and they should focus on solving problems. Past controversies and changes in beliefs are usually only studied by science historians.

Kuhn sees the linear model of scientific advancement as flawed. It doesn’t reflect the reality of science history. Science history, like art, political/economic, technology, and religious history, is characterized by occasional bursts of radical change (i.e. revolutions) surrounded by long periods of stability. Unlike these other fields, however, which all past civilizations possessed in some form, science is much newer and for over four centuries monopolized by Europeans.

Kuhn gives a detailed account of how scientific revolutions happen. To understand revolutions, you need to first understand “normal science,” which is what Kuhn describes as everyday science. Normal science is what most scientists do most of the time. It consists of puzzle solving, of determination of significant fact, of matching facts with theory, and articulation of theory. Examples include determining structural formulas, specific gravities, the speed of light, and arriving at quantitative laws. Normal science is guided by “paradigms,” constellations of beliefs, values, and techniques that are shared by members of a scientific community. A paradigm accepted by all members of a scientific discipline is a prerequisite for normal scientific work. Fundamental disagreements are characteristics of early stages of scientific development, which go away with the adoption of a shared paradigm. An example is the field of optics before and after Isaac Newton. Before Newton, “though the field’s practitioners were scientists, the net result of their activity was something less than science” (p. 13). Because there was no shared paradigm, everyone writing on optics had to articulate the foundations of his viewpoint. After Newton, scientists accepted his theory of light, and normal scientific optical work began.

A contemporary example of a pre-scientific field is clinical psychology. Psychodynamic therapies differ on fundamentals with cognitive, behavioral, family, sociological, and biological therapies. There is no shared paradigm uniting those who practice these different styles of therapies. As a result, clinical psychology has not made the progress characteristic of mature scientific disciplines like biology, chemistry, or physics.

Newton’s particle theory of light was eventually replaced with newer theories. The first theory to replace it was the wave theory, which derived from the optical writings of Young and Fresnel in the early nineteenth century. This was then replaced in the twentieth century with the contemporary theory of light as photons, with some characteristics of waves and some of particles. This theory derived from the work of Planck, Einstein and others. Each of these changes in theory was an example of a scientific revolution, a topic to which Kuhn devotes most of his book.

Scientific revolutions begin with “anomalies”, experimental results that violate a paradigm-induced expectation. Anomalies usually come about as a result of normal scientific work. One famous example is the late-nineteenth century crisis in physics that led to Einstein’s relativity theory. The wave theory of light, which became the paradigm of the nineteenth century, held that there must be a mechanical ether through which light propagated. All other waves traveled through some medium, and light was no exception. Anomalies arose, however, when both celestial observations and terrestrial experiments failed to find any drift of light through the ether. These anomalies provoked a “crisis”, an unstable condition in which a new paradigm has a good chance of acceptance. Einstein’s special theory of relativity, which he published in 1905, was a direct response to this crisis. This theory led to a new physics paradigm not only about the nature of light, but also about relative space, mass, and motion.

The above analysis is compatible with objective and rational scientists. When they practice normal science scientists are objective. After a new paradigm is accepted, and the crisis which led to it is resolved, scientists are objective. It is in their response to anomaly, and their resistance to change during revolutionary periods, that scientists reveal that there are only human.

When anomalies happen, such as the problems verifying an ether medium through which light travels, scientists have a few options:

1) They can stick with the current paradigm, and either ignore the anomalies, or try to come up with theories explaining the anomalies. Many times these theories are competing. Sometimes these theories and revisions of theories create a confusing mess, such as the modifications to Ptolemaic astronomy that occurred during the Middle Ages.

2) They can abandon the current paradigm in favor of a new one. This presupposes that some creative individual or group of people has put forth an alternative.

When a new paradigm is offered to the scientific community, it usually has not been verified, and doesn’t fit the existing facts and observational data better than the old one. For example, Copernicus’ heliocentric theory did not explain existing astronomical data better than Ptolemaic geocentric theory. It took years for Einstein’s theory of relativity to be experimentally verified.

That’s why scientists cannot choose between competing paradigms based on fact or logic. Many times new theories have an esthetic appeal to some scientists. These scientists help promote the new theory, and bring a greater likelihood that experiments or observations will be done to verify the theory.

Most scientists will stick to the current paradigm, even if it has many anomalies. This is due to the fact that they are human, and most humans resist change. This can be seen in nonscientific contexts. Contemporary American political life is characterized by widespread corruption, inefficiencies, and indebtedness. But due to inertia, it’s very hard to enact even the most basic and obvious reforms. From an external, objective perspective, this resistance to change is irrational, just as scientists sticking to flawed paradigms are irrational. But most people will defy logic and reason in order to maintain stability.

There are some scientists who will embrace a new paradigm. These people have different personalities than most—more open to new experience, more novelty seeking, and less bound to tradition. The most extreme examples are scientists who come up with the new paradigmatic theories. They are usually very young or new to the field. Einstein was in his mid-twenties and not yet a professional scientist when he published his paper on the special theory of relativity.

Let me use a current example to illustrate Kuhn’s thesis. I previously mentioned clinical psychology as pre-scientific field, one that has competing paradigms and theories. This is true when one looks at clinical psychology as a whole, including both psychologists and psychiatrists. Let me focus, however, on psychiatry, i.e. medical doctors who specialize in mental health. They have a shared paradigm, the biochemical/drug theory, which states that mental disorders are caused by chemical imbalances that can be treated by drugs. It’s rare to find a psychiatrist who has time or inclination to provide any kind of talk therapy. Most of them are now pill pushers, who restrict patient interaction to brief sessions, primarily to make diagnoses.

This wasn’t always the case. In the middle of the twentieth century, psychiatrists had a much different paradigm, Freudian psychoanalysis. They spent their time in lengthy analytical sessions with patients. When psychiatric drugs were first introduced in the 1950’s, they were a novelty, and most psychiatrists continued doing psychoanalysis. But over the next few decades, psychiatrists eagerly embraced the new biochemical/drug paradigm. It isn’t hard to understand why. Psychiatrists are trained as medical doctors, which means that they have to take the same biology, chemistry, and physics classes that other doctors take. They had extensive knowledge of anatomy, physiology, and biochemistry that was wasted when they became psychoanalysts. By prescribing drugs to treat mental disorders, however, they got to be “real” doctors. They could put their medical knowledge to use in their professional life, something that they couldn’t do when they were psychoanalysts.

Over the next half century, the biochemical/drug paradigm developed anomalies. These anomalies were summarized by Robert Whitaker in his recent book Anatomy of an Epidemic. The chemical imbalance theory, i.e. that schizophrenia is caused by too much dopamine, and depression by too little serotonin, was never verified. Scientists haven’t made much progress in understanding the cause or pathophysiology of mental illness. Diagnosis is still based on symptoms due to a lack of any reliable or valid lab tests. Drugs that seem to help patients in the short term, have a much more problematic long-term outcome. As newer drugs began to be prescribed more frequently, patients seemed to function worse than they ever did before, many of them becoming permanently disabled and unable to work. Corruption became endemic, with many leading psychiatrists becoming paid spokesmen for drug companies.

In spite of these anomalies, most psychiatrists (and biological mental health researchers) continue to support the biochemical/drug paradigm. Part of the reason for this is the normal resistance to change that I described above. Another reason is that there has been no newer biological paradigm for mental illness. According to Kuhn, “a scientific theory is declared invalid only if an alternate candidate is available to takes its place” (p. 77).

There’s no way to predict how long the wait will be for an alternate candidate. In the case of the crisis in physics about the nature of light, a new theory became available within decades. It took over a millennium for an alternative to the geocentric Ptolemaic theory to arise.

The reason why we can’t predict when an alternate paradigm will come forward is that scientific creative achievement is not linear and progressive. As Kuhn describes in his book, scientific progress is characterized by long sterile periods of pre-science or normal science, interrupted by occasional revolutions. Many times these revolutions are the result of individual creative genius, as in the case of Copernicus, Newton, Darwin, and Einstein. Understanding the psychological characteristics of creative individuals, and the social characteristics of societies that promote create achievement, is beyond the scope of this book. For a psychological perspective, I recommend Eysenck’s Genius or Simonton’s Origins of Genius. For a sociological perspective, I recommend Murray’s Human Accomplishment.

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is only about 200 pages, and not difficult to read. I’m not interested in the philosophy of science, and sections devoted to philosophy I found boring. I’m more interested in historical examples, and found the historical sections more interesting. A problem is that Kuhn briefly goes over some of the older theories and experiments, and I would have preferred to see a more thorough explanation, including illustrations. Another problem is that Kuhn’s examples are exclusively in the physical sciences, and I would have liked to see more biological and psychological examples.

Notwithstanding these limitations, this book is a classic in the history and philosophy of science. I recommend it to anyone interested in science and creativity.

A Review of “Science and Change 1500-1700” by Hugh Kearney

We take modern science for granted, and assume that it has always been the way that it is today, with professional scientists, empirically-based research, peer-reviewed journals, laboratories, and a common scientific method accepted by all. But what we know as science today evolved over time. In the Middle Ages there were monks in monasteries studying “natural philosophy,” and alchemists doing chemical experiments, but no scientists in the modern sense. During the early modern period, something happened to transform natural philosophy and alchemy to science. Hugh Kearney discusses this crucial transition period, aka “The Scientific Revolution,” in his book Science and Change 1500-1700.

This book, originally published in 1971, is an old college textbook of mine that I decided to reread recently. It includes many fascinating images, reproductions of paintings, drawings, and diagrams that are relevant to the text discussion. The prose is clear and straightforward, and it includes a wealth of historical examples. The book’s theme is that the Scientific Revolution can be understood as a mixture of three intellectual traditions: organic, magical, and mechanistic. Each tradition had roots in ancient Greek philosophy. During the Middle Ages, the ancient texts were rediscovered and merged with Christian theology, becoming a new establishment, known as “scholasticism”. The Scientific Revolution was largely a revolt against this establishment, favoring empirical research over reliance on ancient authorities.

The organic tradition was based on what we now call biology, with the emphasis on study of living organisms. The Greek philosophers who most influenced men working in this tradition were Aristotle and Galen. Aristotle’s philosophy was wide ranging, but his empirical observations most influenced people working in the organic tradition. Galen, who came after Aristotle, was best known for his anatomical and medical work.

The University of Padua was the capital of the organic tradition during the Scientific Revolution. Some famous names of faculty members there include Andreas Vesalius (1514-64), the “father of modern anatomy,” and Gabriele Fallopio (1523-63), who discovered the Fallopian tubes. William Harvey (1578-1657), who discovered the circulation of blood, was a student at Padua.

The magical tradition provided a scientific framework in which nature was seen as a work of art. God was thought of as a magician or artist, and mathematics was a tool to understand the Deity. The Greek philosopher who most influenced this movement was Plato. His ideas were taken up and modified by the Roman philosopher Plotinus, who founded a movement called “neo-Platonism.” Also influential in this movement were writings attributed to a legendary Egyptian named Hermes Trismegistus, along with the Jewish Cabbala.

Some famous men in the history of astronomy were influenced by the magical tradition. Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543), who was influenced by neo-Platonism while living ten years in Italy, developed a mathematical heliocentric theory. Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), who was influenced by astrology, made a large number of astronomical observations. Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) made use of these observations to argue that planets move in elliptical orbits around the sun, and that the velocities of the planets are not uniform during the course of their orbits. Kepler utilized the magnetic theory of English physician William Gilbert (1540-1603) to explain planetary motion in terms of magnetic interactions. Kepler’s last book was a mass of neo-Platonic speculation. Isaac Newton (1642-1727), the discoverer of the universal law of gravitation, was in part a neo-Platonic mystic. He looked upon space and time as part of the Divine presence in the universe.

The mechanistic tradition viewed nature as a machine. Natural phenomena were regular and predictable, capable of being understood by mathematical laws. Greek philosophers in this tradition included Democritus (an early atomist) and Archimedes (a mathematician and engineer).

Some famous names in physics, chemistry and applied mathematics were part of the mechanistic tradition. Galileo (1564-1642) developed laws of motion based on experiment. He contradicted Aristotelian doctrine by showing that the speed of a falling body is not proportional to weight. Mathematician and philosopher René Descartes (1596-1650) helped promote the mechanistic world view. Descartes’ philosophy conflicted at almost every point with Aristotelian principles, but his extensive use of deductive reasoning left him as exposed to experimental attack as any of the scholastics. Mathematician, experimenter, and philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623-62), who invented a primitive calculator, saw no trace of the Christian God in the world of nature. According to Pascal, God sometimes intervened miraculously, but didn’t interfere with the mechanical laws of nature. Pascal attacked the Aristotelian assumption that the vacuum doesn’t exist by doing a series of experiments. Robert Boyle (1627-91) applied mechanical philosophy to the world of chemistry. He formulated the law that pressure is inversely proportional to volume. Isaac Newton was in part a mechanist, especially in his optical work, which showed that light behaved according to mechanical laws when passed through different media.

What tradition won out in the end? For science, the mechanistic tradition became dominant. Physics and chemistry became the models by which all sciences were evaluated. Modern astronomy, which started with the neo-Platonic speculations of Copernicus and Kepler, eventually shed its mystical/astrological side and became a sub-discipline of physics. Even biology, which began in the Aristotelian/organic tradition, over time became mechanical. Darwin’s theory of evolution did away with the need for postulating Aristotelian final causes to explain higher organisms. Natural selection, not God’s will, explains how humans evolved from primitive ancestors. Cells, tissues, and organs became to be viewed as biochemical factories, randomly designed from a genetic blueprint.

For society as a whole, the mechanistic philosophy became most influential in the late 17th and 18th centuries. The philosophies of Descartes, Spinoza, Hobbes, Locke, Voltaire, Adam Smith, and the American and French revolutionaries were squarely in the mechanistic tradition. The Scientific Revolution influenced the early stages of the Industrial Revolution. For example, James Watt, inventor of the steam engine, was acquainted with scientist Joseph Black, who did work on latent heat. The neo-classical revival of the Age of Enlightenment was influenced by the mechanistic tradition. Clear and concise prose, such as that of John Locke, became a model for many others. Poetic satire such as Pope’s Dunciad replaced poetry based on magical and mystical sources of language and imagery. Neoclassical art, such as that of David, emphasized clarity and simplicity.

The Romantic movement that began in the late 18th century turned against the mechanistic/scientific viewpoint. It influenced philosophy, art, music, politics, and culture. Gradually, romanticism was replaced by realism and then modernism and post-modernism. While these subsequent movements revolted against previous movements, and had unique characteristics, none of them revived the mechanistic philosophy. This has led to a division between mechanistic scientists, engineers, technicians, doctors, lawyers, and other practical people, versus artistic, creative, philosophical, religious, spiritual, and other non-practical people, a divide that persists across the world today. This division is also present in most people, with a practical, mechanical side and a non-practical, spiritual side, with usually one side being dominant.

One criticism of Kearney’s thesis of the different traditions is that he may have emphasized too much the non-scientific views and philosophies of some of the early scientists. While Harvey was influenced by the organic philosophy of Aristotle and Galen, and Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton by neo-Platonism, are these influences essential in understanding their scientific achievements? These men are famous today because they made some discovery that influenced the future direction of science. Their discoveries came not from their philosophical and religious influences, but in spite of them. They applied the scientific method to refute some ancient authority or commonly-held belief. For example, is the fact that Kepler believed in neo-Platonism, but Galileo did not, reason enough to separate them into different traditions? They were both natural scientists who made important discoveries, discoveries that relied on observation, data, and mathematics. Are their religious or philosophical beliefs essential to understanding their contribution to science?

I recommend “Science and Change 1500-1700” to anyone interested in the history of science.